Just seconds before Felix Baumgartner was about to bunny-hop off a capsule attached to a helium balloon floating at the dark edge of space, the world records he was attempting to break no longer mattered.

Humbled at the site of the planet some 39,000 metres below, the Austrian daredevil’s main thought was getting back to his family and girlfriend — and not wanting to die.

“The whole world is watching now and I wish the whole world could see what I see,” Mr. Baumgartner said Sunday, as he perched on the edge of a skateboard-sized ledge and prepared to leap. “And sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.”

Then, Mr. Baumgartner jumped, plummeting as fast as 1,342.8 kilometres per hour and shattering three world records, including the highest skydive ever, according to preliminary figures.

And despite falling into a flat spin so violent he almost pushed a button to deploy his parachute early, the extreme athlete regained control and darted straight toward the earth, becoming the only human to break the sound barrier outside of an airplane.

Mr. Baumgartner opened his parachute at roughly 1,585 metres high — as millions watched on television and online — and landed safely on the ground in Roswell, New Mexico, with a casual trot. Cheers erupted in the Mission Control room.

The 43-year-old then fell to his knees in the open field and threw both his arms up in victory, at about 2:20 p.m. ET — just 10 minutes after he stepped into thin air.

The former military parachutist was soon hugged by his mother and father, who took their first trip outside Europe to see his historic plunge, and his girlfriend jumped up and wrapped her legs around him.

“When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble do not think about breaking records, gaining scientific data,” Mr. Baumgartner said in a press conference after the skydive. “The only thing you want is to come back alive.”

Mr. Baumgartner is believed to have broken the records for the highest altitude skydive (39,045 metres), the longest freefall without a parachute (36,529 metres) and the fastest fall achieved during a skydive at 1,342.8 kilometres or Mach 1.29.

The Austrian has made a career of risky jumps including skydiving across the English Channel and parachuting off the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

But Sunday’s supersonic dive was much harder than he had anticipated, Mr. Baumgartner said, and came after days of delays due to weather.

His ascent into the stratosphere took about 2-1/2 hours.The 850,000-cubic-metre plastic balloon, which lifted the 3.3-by-2.4 metre fiberglass and acrylic capsule, is about one-tenth the thickness of a plastic bag, or roughly as thin as a dry cleaner bag.

Mr. Baumgartner’s body pierced the atmosphere at 1, 342.8 kph, according to preliminary numbers released by Brian Utley, the certification official for the Federation Aeronautic International, at the press conference.

But it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing.

Felix just broke the record for the record of highest manned balloon flight at over 113,740 ft. http://t.co/rf5aDN7D

“My visor is fogging up,” Mr. Baumgartner gasped over the radio, obscuring his view, before clearing later. And shortly after Mr. Baumgartner exited the capsule, he began to spiral.

For a moment he thought he would lose consciousness. He debated whether he should push a manual button to deploy his parachute — cutting short his freefall and likely tossing out many records in the process — and make it alive, or push through, he said.

“After a couple of seconds, I thought I had it under control, and I did,” he said. “And that’s why we broke the speed of sound.”

He more than broke past the sound barrier, typically measured at more than 1,110 kilometres per hour.

Still, Mr. Baumgarner doesn’t know when he hit top speed. He wore a pressurized suit to ensure his safety, but it also eliminated the physical cues like flapping material.

“I didn’t feel it…. you do not feel the air,” he said. “It’s like swimming without touching the water.”

But, Mr. Baumgartner did have a monitoring system on — and scientists will comb through the data which will help “break incredible new ground”, his physician Dr. Jonathan Clark said during the press conference.

Still, the Austrian daredevil did not break the freefall time record of Joe Kittinger — his mentor — of 4:36.

“Records are meant to be broken,” said Mr. Kittinger said during Sunday’s press conference. “A better champion cannot be found than Felix…. He did a fantastic job.”

When asked how he planned to top his feat, Mr. Baumgartner said his next step would be to help the next big daredevil to outdo him.

“Honestly, I want to inspire the next generation,” he said. “I would love… sitting in the same spot four years from now and a young guy asking for advice because he wants to break my record.”

This attempt marked the end of a five-year road for Baumgartner, a record-setting high-altitude jumper. He already made two preparation jumps in the area, one from 15 miles high and another from 18 miles high. It will also be the end of his extreme altitude jumping career; he has promised this will be his final jump.

Baumgartner has said he plans to settle down with his girlfriend and fly helicopters on mountain rescue and firefighting missions in the U.S. and Austria.

As Baumgartner ascended in the balloon, so did the number of viewers watching on YouTube. Nearly 7.3 million watched as he sat on the edge of the capsule moments before jumping. After he landed, Red Bull posted a picture of Baumgartner on his knees on the ground to Facebook, generating nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more than 29,000 shares in less than 40 minutes.

On Twitter, half the worldwide trending topics had something to do with the jump, pushing past seven NFL football games.